our disposal, all the flight areas evacuated for our course. Scarce munitions were given freely to us. And in any formation where Ran flew, usually manning the rear aircraft, you could expect surprises.
“Idle your engine!” he would suddenly order, and the designated pilot had to pull up and look for a place for a forced landing, and always find one far away that could be reached only by planning and finesse. When Ran was around, the air hummed with energy. He was a dangerous and surprising guy, and we were constantly on guard. He kept teaching us his motto that the only proof of a fighter is his results. In his words, “The courage and integrity of a warrior are measured by the number of holes in the target.”
ON JANUARY 31, 1967, we went down to the squadron for some night flying. This was to be one of the special flights of the BBN course. The plan was to take off from Tel Nof in pairs and navigate south to the southernmost city of Eilat, and from there at low level over the Red Sea to the limit of the Mirage’s range. The mission was to do a sea search in the dark, locate and record all ships.
This mission had immediate relevance: just two weeks before, Ran and I—we were together in the ready room of the Bats—were scrambled down to the Red Sea to attack a Saudi vessel that had opened fire on a Israeli ship some fifty kilometers south of Eilat. We reached the place at dusk and found a small black boat chugging after a fat, white whale of a ship. The plump lady was by far faster, and fled leaving a long white wake behind her in the dark sea. Our flight ended when we buzzed the black leech a few times and finally convinced it to give up the chase and point its bow back toward the Saudi coast.
Then an operational question was asked: how to defend Israeli shipping in our southern port at night? How do you find vessels in the dark? The BBN course was certainly the right laboratory, and this was going to be the first test. The night that was selected for it was during a full moon. But the choice of this night was not lucky. Deep winter lay over the country; strong winds blew, rain fell, and all the roads were awash, and all the time lightning flared and thunder boomed.
During the preflight briefing we looked at each other skeptically. The IAF of the 1960s didn’t fly in such conditions, especially not at night. We thought, when the briefing was over, that we would get a night off.
Then Ran took the floor. “What if it were wartime?” he asked us.
I LED THE FIRST PAIR. We took off in close formation, and after wheels up Yoeli, my wingman, stuck close by, our aircraft just a few meters apart. Together we burrowed into the clouds. Inside, the air was dark, turbulent, and unstable, and my Mirage pitched and yawed. In the mirror above my head I could see the dim lights of Yoeli’s ship dancing close on my left wing, blurring and brightening at times together with the thickness of the black fog. We passed through spurts of rain and hail, and I increased the intensity of my running lights to the maximum, to help Yoeli see me. Then I focused on my flight instruments.
I knew that Yoeli could not take his eyes off me for a split second, lest he lose me in the dark. He had put his trust in me. I had to get him through this soup. I was his compass, his artificial horizon, and his aerial speedometer. Wherever I went, he went, too. As we climbed, conditions worsened. Our two Mirages bumped along and made noise. We were going through a storm, and my hands on the controls were aching from excessive pressure. Yet I felt a mix of anxiety and pride in myself and in Yoeli, who held on and kept tight with me all the way up. I knew well that he also—just like me—was pushing out of his mind any thought of Khativa. In the group picture at the flying school, air cadet Khativa stood between Yoeli and myself.
At last, at thirty thousand feet the world cleared and we broke out into a clear, bright night. A lonely, cold moon bathed us in white light. We breathed deeply, postponing for now the question of the return to base. Yoeli slipped away from my wing into a looser formation, and we both gazed across the expanse that spread beneath us to the horizon. The cloud tops were like white and fantastic mountain ranges washed by moonlight. From time to time bubbles of yellow electric light inflated inside their huge masses in crazy spasms, vibrated for some moments, and were gone.
I checked my chronometer, got out a map and set up to continue the mission. First I had to find the Red Sea. Just as I was getting ready I heard nervous, rapid chatter on the radio. I froze to listen.
Somebody asked, “What’s that?”
Another voice broke in, “Horizon! Watch your artificial horizon!”
The first voice returned—now I recognized it as ZBB—and in complete tranquillity he said, “It’s all right now.”
We waited in silence, and I do not know whether the short flash we both saw to the north was a flash of lightning that lit the clouds from inside, or ZBB’s Mirage as it hit the ground under them. The lights of Eilat flickered beneath us through a hole in the clouds. The second voice was now on the air, shocked. It couldn’t stop talking.
I pulled Yoeli back on my wing, and we turned for home.
FOR US FROM THE THIRTY-FIRST CLASS, ZBB was the fourth casualty from the fifteen young men who had stood at attention to get their wings (two more were devoured earlier by the Harvard trainer), and the wars hadn’t even begun yet. This was a high price to pay, but by no means unusual.
Training accidents and losses were viewed at the time as a necessary evil, just a part of becoming a fighter pilot, and not as a plague that must be eradicated. And though accidents might occur—friends auger in, collide in the air, spin out from vertigo—this was their contribution to the defense of Israel. This way I accepted, like all my friends, the disappearance of Khativa in the Mediterranean, Yakir’s crash in the Sea of Galilee right under my nose, and today, the loss of Zur Ben Barak in the clouds behind me. That’s life. What can be done about it? Hope for the best.
Believing this, I was stunned to meet somebody who thought otherwise and who was not scared of saying it loud and clear to his commander’s face and the whole world. This happened early on, while we were still juniors in the Scorpions, flying Super Mysteres. Umsh passed through a flock of birds, and his engine choked. He punched out and parachuted to earth. As he was brought safe and sound back to the squadron, we all crowded around him to hear what happened. Then we were happy to see our squadron commander write in the accident report as expected: “Accident caused by force of nature.”
Captain Yozef Salant raised his hand and remarked, “It’s the pilot’s fault.”
We all were stunned. Birds—what can you do about that?
“What, my fault?” asked Umsh. “How’s that? We flew in high speed, in formation, and how on Earth could I see those goddamn small chicks?” All looked at Yozef in dismay. He wasn’t a guy who entered a quarrel lightly.
Salant asked, “Umshweiff, is the aircraft guilty?”
“No.”
“Are the birds?”
“Of course not, but—”
“So who’s left?”
Umsh spat out angrily, “Some people here are assholes. What should I do when the exercise requires high- speed flying where there are birds?”
“Who told you to fly at high speed with birds around?”
“The commander said—”
“Then the commander is guilty,” said Salant in the voice of a teacher who had just written the solution on the blackboard. We looked at him, but it took all of us a long time to get the message.
Zur Ben Barak was buried with us standing at attention among the cypress trees at the cemetery of Hanita, his kibbutz. We listened to the singing of the shovels and spades and the lumps of dirt falling upon his coffin, each of us thinking thoughts like well, now we’ve buried ZBB, too. Yael, his young wife, wept, holding their baby girl. Itamar, his father, stood bent over the grave of his first son. The grave was filled, and each of us stole a look at the others: Who’s next?
What could we do, anyway? Vertigo had beaten Zur, nobody was guilty but he himself, right? So that night we celebrated on the deck of a ship in Haifa Harbor. The next morning we got up and returned to Tel Nof, to continue our training.
FOR THE END OF THE BBN COURSE—one of the best experiences I ever had as a pilot—Ran saved the best
